Fox Lane Pulls Away in the Second Half to Beat Greeley
For one half anyway, last Tuesday evening’s game between Fox Lane and Horace Greeley didn’t seem like a matchup between two teams heading in opposite directions.
Greeley’s Harrison Brown defends in last week’s game. Photo by Andy Jacobs
The score was tied on six different occasions and the lead changed hands half a dozen times too.
Eventually, though, the Foxes began to take command after intermission. They built a nine-point lead by the end of the third quarter and went on to a convincing 62-47 triumph over the host Quakers. Will Quaranta led four Fox Lane players in double figures, finishing with a game-high 17 points as the Foxes won for the 12th time in 16 games this season.
“I like when I go in and challenge them at halftime and they come out and respond like that,” said Fox Lane coach Chris Violante afterwards. “We came out in the third quarter and really started to knock down some shots and execute a little better.”
A 3-pointer by Will Paul to open the second quarter had given the Foxes an 18-10 lead. But the Quakers, sparked by seven points from Harrison Brown and five from Cameron Ciero, outscored Fox Lane 18-11 the rest of the period and trailed by just two points at halftime.
Back-to-back 3-pointers by the Foxes’ James Morales and Carlito Carvalho early in the third quarter quickly stretched the Fox Lane lead to 36-29. When Greeley later moved to within 38-35 on a Matt Xie basket, Carvalho and Nick Bonura responded by connecting on 3-point shots 55 seconds apart. Carvalho followed with a pair of free throws with 1:16 left in the period and the Foxes suddenly had an 11-point advantage.
“When we shoot it,” said Violante, “we’re pretty difficult to defend. We made some shots in the first half, but were inconsistent.”
The Foxes didn’t make any more 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, but they didn’t need to. After a Ciero basket moved Greeley within nine points, Fox Lane went on a 14-2 run that all but finished the Quakers. Andrew Redhead’s two buckets began the spurt and a pair of layups from Quaranta concluded it, allowing the Foxes to build their largest lead of the night at 62-41.
“We just didn’t play defense,” said frustrated Quakers coach Dave Fernandes after his team’s second loss to the Foxes this season. “Fox Lane, I’m not taking anything away from them, they’ve got some good shooters. But the kid that killed us today was number 4 (Quaranta) and he should be recognized. He absolutely killed us. He played tremendous defense on us and he worked us under the boards. Not really tall, but uses every pound that he has to wall people, box out. I was impressed watching him today.”
Quaranta’s relentlessness under the boards helped the Foxes to a 30-19 rebounding advantage over the Quakers. Meanwhile, all three Fox Lane guards reached double figures in scoring. Morales wound up with 12 points, while Carvalho and Bonura each finished with 10. Brown led the Quakers with 15 points and Xie chipped in with 13.
“I like the way we played defense all game against a pretty good offensive team,” said the Foxes’ Violante, whose players closed out the regular season later in the week by beating both Port Chester and Woodlands. “I thought Tommy Palmerton and Andrew Redhead and Jordan Pasetsky and Will Quaranta played really good defense today on their interior players because that’s really their strength, their interior players.”
The Quakers, who managed to earn just their fifth win of the season by edging Rye two nights later behind 30 points from Brown, never led Fox Lane after halftime and their biggest lead of the evening was just two points, 22-20, following a Xie layup a couple of minutes into the second quarter. Fernandes never would have predicted before the season began that Quaker victories would be so hard to come by.
“I love my kids,” he said. “They’re a great group of guys. In practice, they work hard. It’s not like they’re not working hard. I feel bad for them that I’m not coming up with something else, that’s what hurts the most. They’re pretty good players. I really mean that. They just can’t put it all together. I can’t get five playing together. It’s always something missing.”
Fernandes is anxiously awaiting the sectional tournament and the opportunity for his players to put the regular season behind them and start all over.
“You never know,” he said. “I really believe we have some talent here. With the boys I have, we could actually get in the play-in, win the game, and then give someone a nightmare. We could actually be a nightmare if everybody comes to play and we have that day, or the stars line up.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
Read more of Andy’s full bio here.
Read Andy’s archived work here.